How Rahul Gandhi made a fool of himself on national television
Call him Pappu, shehzada, or the reluctant prince, the young Gandhi scion - Rahul Gandhi - over his low key political career spanning roughly over a decade now, has bagged more petnames than newspaper headlines. And going by the limited public appearances he had made hitherto (where he fared no better than stand-up comedians and made a total mockery of himself and his party), it's not hard to see why. One would have deemed it as a clever move for Rahul to debut on a television interview and dispel the air of hopelessness around him. Nevertheless, his maiden TV interview, dubbed as the biggest political interview, only seems to have firmed the nation's belief that Rahul Gandhi is no leader for the country.
Here’s what could be gleaned about him from the said interview:
1. We are sure that Rahul Gandhi doesn't have any clue on what being 'specific’ is all about. The Gandhi heir seemed far from prepared to grapple Arnab Goswami's tirade of difficult questions. And no, they weren’t questions that struck him out of the blue — all thanks to the BJP, these are the questions that are metaphorically lobbed at Gandhi religiously every other day. So when Goswami declared at the onset of the interview that he wants ‘specific’ answers to his questions, Gandhi should have known that the nation doesn’t want to know about the “Gandhis” from him. However, Gandhi refused to answer a single question in a way that didn’t sound like a particularly unimpressive voiceover for a Gandhi biopic.
2. The interview, that turned out to be nothing more than a laughriot, revealed Rahul’s most favorite word — “system” and his least favorite — “Modi”. Rahul Gandhi clearly loves the word ‘system’ way more than the sound of his own name. While his limited vocabulary is not greatly a concern, what is, is his correspondence to the word, as it applies to India currently, which is completely botched up. Here is the Vice President of the incumbent government, talking about how the ‘system’ needs to be revamped. If ‘system’ is the political establishment that runs the country, Congress while not being wholly responsible for it, is indeed responsible for a large part of things. So did Rahul Gandhi declare he is going to shake the entrenched political malpractices up? No he didn’t. Did he strongly demand all political parties be brought under his trophy policy – RTI? No. Did he clearly enumerate the steps he is taking to make the ‘system’ more accessible to the country. No.
3. Rahul, the hailed captain of Congress' sinking ship, seemed greatly unwilling to shoulder the burden of the wrongdoings of his party, though he doesn’t quite mind lapping up the glorious history of political hegemony in India. Understandably, it would have been wrong to ask Rahul to ‘apologize’ for the anti-Sikh riots as the anchor framed it. But how can one overlook his lack of acknowledgment of this phase of Congress’ history as he was not a ‘functional’ member then. His vile attempt to dissociate a political narrative from selected phases of its own development only runs the risk of being read as disregard for the past, lack of penitence and an evident absence of humility.
AW: Suchorita Choudhury
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